Can retiring early make you crazy? Get the latest news from the world of Hoco-mania. Surprising insights on arithmetic, imagined 'death threats', message board administration, and the merits of leaving a high-paying job only to pursue sub-minimum wage work in retirement to make ends meet. For more on Hocomania see Rob Bennett, author of Passion Saving.

As I recall that was someone Rob paid back at the pinnacle of his trolling career to say nice things about him. I also seem to recall that she came to regret her brief association with the mentally ill internet troll. Rob's brief encounters with hoco-naive, would-be "helpers" usually ended poorly.

Been busy. Kid #1 is 22 months old now, and kid #2 is due in less than a month. Student loan will be paid off this year, 8 years early. Interest rate's so low it doesn't matter. I need to change withholding at work. Between mortgage interest, other deductions, and the child tax credit I'm letting them hang onto way too much money. Enough to take my growing family to Disney World several times over. If Rob had only worked a little bit longer and invested his money properly, perhaps he could be happily retired today and take HIS family to Disney World.

Audience has to be in the single digits. I'm just waiting around to see if hocomania and its founder go out with a whimper or a blaze of glory. My bet is on whimper as Rob bleats away endlessly about his delusions in obscurity until the day old age, illness or accident spells

Alas, mental illness assured that Rob and his family would never have a normal life. If he hadn't chosen personal finance as his obsession he would have found something else to feed his narcissism and the end result would been the same. A life lived Catastrophically Unproductively.

Just dropping by. Wow. If there was some award for longest-lasting internet troll, we'd be forced to nominate the guy. Ironically, he actually helped me with my early retirement, but not in the way he would think. This was my first moderation/admin job - keeping Hocus away from the innocent posters of of the financial world. It led to me applying for a moderation part time job, which led to 9 years of (fun) corporate work that I wasn't expecting at all, where I ended up as Director of Operations. Quit last year during the first week that I got a new boss I didn't care for, and now I'm back to early retirement with a little extra to show for all the work I did. Meanwhile, Hocus does not appear to have improved or advanced in any way. Will have to check if he's got a new book out for me to review. Nice to see some familiar names.

I put my info into the "best retirement calculator" at Bankrate and found that I can contribute $0 and retire on 80% of my income at 58. The interest rates I put in there were pretty conservative, 6% pre-retirement and 4% post-retirement. I've evolved from "retire early abroad" to that I'd prefer to be more or less independent and be able to get some bullshit job to pass the time along with hobbies. With this path, I could conceivably still hold a job until 59.5, 62, or beyond. My next door neighbor is 69 and still drives a livery car around part-time in order to pass the time, he doesn't need the money at all. He's got a $50,000 per year pension with health benefits, he waited until the full retirement age to collect social security, his house was paid off long ago, and he has a sizable IRA. People who stay active like that seem to age better than those who just seek leisure.

So..... as of earlier tonight the 401k contribution is now down to 6%, 100% Roth option. I'll get the 6% Roth, plus another 6% traditional from the match. Up until a few months ago the 401K was 100% traditional and nearly maxed out, but I'll be focusing on the Roth and HSA space in order to minimize the RMDs in the future. Still maxing out the HSA and Roth IRA for now.

I'm still 33. I'll always be happy that I gave myself such a head start. We really live at the best time to be an American, in a financial sense. They give us so many incentives to save for our own futures it's really amazing that so many people fail to do anything at all. Even more amazing is someone like Rob, who was on a path towards a comfortable retirement but did so many things so catastrophically wrong.